It is 1969 and young newspaper sportswriter Eb McCourry's world is about to change. He is pushed into emergency service by the newsroom when an airline crashes near Asheville, North Carolina, and his first real news assignment is like a drug. With mid-sized American cities facing dramatic cultural makeovers, Eb leaps enthusiastically to the front lines and front pages in the newspaper industry, which has gigantic challenges of its own.
He faces looming deadlines, intricate and difficult cultural stories, investigations of murder, drug dealing and social justice. Abortion is still illegal, but demand is steady. The Vietnam War is intensifying as body counts increase. The Civil Rights movement has become violent and pervasive.
And Eb is learning as he goes, leading his young colleagues to affect internal changes at the newspaper as they learn the business and react to the realities of daily life.
The stories are real, based on people and events that made being a journalist one of the most exciting professions open to young, hard-driving idealists. NEWS! tells their stories in an unvarnished, straight-ahead narrative that reflects the urgency of beating the deadline with accuracy, fairness and truth-the way newspapers operated all the time, 50 years ago.